


Soulmates

by theladyofwords



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8965819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyofwords/pseuds/theladyofwords
Summary: Different soulmate alternate universes drabbles, all in one place. If you don't see your favorite, you're welcome to ask for me to fill the prompt.





	1. Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmate au, where you live in a black and white world until you meet your soulmate. However, when your soulmate dies, your world reverts back.

Vex’ahlia’s mother had told her and brother all about soulmates, she had told them all the tales, and had done so with a sad expression on her face. She had been one of many, who found themselves abandoned by their other half, and so with a grim face her stories came with a cautionary warning, that some just ignored what the gods meant for them. It was one of the many reasons Vex’ahlia and Vax’ildan would never forgive their father. That sad expression on their mother’s face when she detailed every color for them when they would ask, despite the joy it had brought her children.

Her favorite color had been yellow – like the sunflowers that grew in the field close to the small cottage. The same flowers that Vax and her would bring to get their mother to smile brightly for them.

When Vex’ahlia’s world had become colored by meeting the young man with white hair they’d stumbled across in the cell, yellow had not disappointed her. It held her mother’s smiles, and the fond memories she and Vax’ildan shared with one another, and her, picking those beautiful flowers. The day she saw a sunflower in color for the first day, Vex found herself on her soul mate’s shoulder, crying tears of joy, because the man was nothing like her father, not one bit.

But Vex’ahlia’s favorite color was not yellow, no it became blue. The color of his coat, of his eyes, the sky and the sea. The color of songbirds, and small flowers. Blue was her favorite color.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

It was de Rolo tradition to save your love, and your hand for your soulmate. Your soulmate was Pelor’s gift, your soulmate had been chosen by him and his rays. It was why he kept the color from your eyes until you met them, they made your life whole, they completed you.

Percy had remembered his mother’s scream of agony when her world became black and white all over again. He knew that his father had fallen, and soon the rest of them would be too. Black and white and grey, it was all he thought he deserved after he escaped, and began to roam aimlessly. He sought revenge for his family, for his siblings’ other halves’ who were out there combing the world, forever cursed colorless because of their actions. Percival hadn’t thought himself worth his soulmate, until his eyes had been opened to all that had been there, unseen, up to the moment she had graced him with her presence.

Percival had to learn all his colors again. Black, white and grey were the same, of course, but the variants in between were all different now that he could see. His mother, who had told all of her children that her favorite color was white, had lied, he found as they reclaimed Whitestone. Her personal rooms’ walls had all been shades of green, most of her gowns too. Her prized gardens, now overgrown, had been full of green with only a few pops of other colors here and there.

He figured she had told them that so they could feel they could see her favorite color too, that she had picked a color that they all could see as well as her. The thought had brought him tears, and he had been quickly rounded up and held by his dear Vex’ahlia.

But his favorite color was not green, like his mother’s had been. Not the color of the grass, the garden, or the forest that was just outside the city gates. No, Percival found himself favoring blue. The blue feathers Vex wore in her hair, for instance. It was the color of the sky, the color of water of all kinds. It was the color of his sister’s eyes, that brightened every time she saw him, being reunited at last after all those years where each feared the other dead…


	2. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate au where one possesses a countdown mark on their person that countdowns to when they meet their soulmate - episode 58 spoilers.

Anna Ripley had teased the mark on his arm when she had tortured him. She told him it was a countdown to his death, not his soulmate. That his soulmate would be a cruel death when she was done with him, and he had grown to believe it. As he laid there, curled up in the corner of his cell, he believed the mark would come to show not his soulmate, but his end.  
  
So as he watched the minutes turn to seconds, he braced for his death. When the cell door creaked open, and he heard a woman’s gasp – he heard death come for him.  
  
_But it did not.  
  
Anna Ripley had lied to him._  
  
When he glanced up, he saw not a lady of death, but a woman and her brother standing there, gawking at him. He saw the woman’s pale face, etched with worry and fear as she glanced at his shivering body. He saw her taking in his rumpled appearance, and roughed up form. He saw not death, but an angel. The angel who had taken him far away from that. The angel who had given him back his life and freedom.  
_  
Vex’ahlia was more than he had hoped for, at any point in his life._  
  
When he was younger, he had simply wanted a prettier soulmate than Julius, his teasing elder brother who was so sure he’d have the prettiest girl to exist. Vex’ahlia was that and more, her beauty was both physical and mental. Her prowess in battle amazed him, her keenness with coin was brilliant, and her heart was made of the purest gold in any land.  
  
She was also the woman who helped win back his home, helped him re-established his relationship with his little sister. She was the woman who held him when his past came to haunt him, whether it was day or night.  
  
When she had died, he had lost a bit of his own self, his own soul. And then she had come back, and with it came the thirst to prove his worth all over again.  
  
When he had turned to forgive Ripley, he uttered a prayer to any god who would listen to his atheist ass. But more importantly he had prayed to Vex’ahlia and hoped she could keep on living and fighting for him. He prayed that she would stay strong as he faded out from this world.  
  
_And like a grain of sand in an hourglass, he fell._


	3. Brown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate au, where one eye is the color of your soulmates’ until you meet them.

Julius and Vesper loved to tease him about his left eye. It was as brown as dirt or mud, and Percival had no taste for either. All his siblings had light colored eyes for their left eyes, Julius had two nearly identical colors that one couldn’t even tell apart unless they were to lean in close enough. Percival’s mother had bright blue eyes, the kind that his right eye took after. She would softly sigh and coo at all seven of them (at least in the privacy of their personal rooms, not the open ones), looking forward to the day that each and every one of them looked back at her with a single color. _“Then my work will be done, all my children would be happy_.” She would tell them.  
  
Only five of them died before their eyes could change, and she and father died along with them. Percival tried not to imagine what happened to his siblings’ other halves, as stories said that you went blind in your left eye when your soulmate died before you saw them. He tried to not imagine his mother’s vision worsening when his father was knocked down. He tried not to think about any of them at all, to be honest.

It seldom came to his mind when he was on the run, few things came to his mind then. He just wanted to be safe and far away from those who harmed him and his family. He just wanted a haven. Then he came to want revenge, and sought it.

When the twins broke him out of his cell, he hadn’t realize the change for a few weeks. It wasn’t until they stopped at an inn and he had access to a mirror that he saw the brown eye was blue. He now had both his mother’s eyes – his own eyes.

Of course Vex’ahlia didn’t notice it right away either. When they had met Percival’s eyes were both blue, and for all he knew, her eyes at been both brown for a while. The discovery shook both them as they rattled their brains trying to figure out whom their other half was.  
  
It wasn’t until Vax’ildan broke down laughing at the two blind idiots over the campfire one night, about a month and a half after they met, that they had their answer. Percival got quite the show as he watched his soulmate wail on her twin. Then she had plopped down next to him and made him kiss her bruised cheek. It was like having a family again.


	4. Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate au where soulmates feel each other’s pains - I made soulmates actually gain each other’s wounds though.

At the age of five, Percival shrieked during a family dinner, causing his mother to rush to his side and pull up his sleeves – revealing skinned elbows. Father had laughed and patted him on his head, he was far too young to understand, and mother had kissed both his elbows before giving him extra dessert. Julius had only stared, while Vesper had smiled – the others were either too young or weren’t born at the time.

At the age of seven, Percival woke up crying, with cuts and bruises covering his legs. It wasn’t until a servant heard him that someone came to see what was wrong. That was when his mother had explained it all to him, how soulmates felt one another’s pains and injuries. Percival cursed his other half, but his mother had only laughed softly as she helped press snow to his legs.

“It’s a gift, Percival, you’ll understand when you’re older – I promise.” She had told him, before handing him a nice warm cup of hot cider to distract him from his legs.

At the age of twelve, Percival collapsed in the hall. It was in front of a visiting dignitary, and the whole castle had been in an uproar. The bite of a bear had somehow found his way on his arm. Father had rushed him to a healer, all on his own. For once Percival felt like the center of his father’s world and felt so shameful for thinking that way. His father’s words in the matter mirrored his mother’s, so similar to her first explanation. But father laughed and patted his son’s shoulder gently,  
  
“You’ve got yourself a strong partner, boy. They’ll make up for that brain of yours, hm?” Something about that started to sound pleasant to him. Brawn to his brain. But a cup of hot cider was promptly given to him and everything began to feel fuzzy.

Percival tried to ignore the feel in his gut once a moon. He tried not to think of his other half despite the pains he felt. Only Vesper pitied him as she caught on, bringing him tricks of the trade to cease his pains. On the bright side, Percy now knew _something_ about his soulmate. _Other that she apparently tangled with bears._

Percival learned to ignore the scrapes and scars he often received, his pain tolerance steadily getting better. _But after that night_ , he lived for those moments where her marks marred his skin. It reminded him he wasn’t _alone_ , that she was out there somewhere. Whether he deserved her or not, the gods had somehow linked them together…

Then Ripley had caught him, and put him in that tiny little cell. She had _hurt_ him. She had _maimed_ him. She was trying to _destroy_ him. His soulmate was somewhere out there struggling to breathe just like him, doubling over and begging for mercy – just like him. _He wished he could apologize._

Days later a pair of Half-Elven twins came to his rescue, and the girl funnily enough had a bear companion. Percival had only smiled at the animal, remembering fond memories of another time. That was until it became very evident that this woman was his other half.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Vex’ahlia grew up with the story tales. She knew how soulmates worked - when one person got hurt, so did the other. While she was very, very young – just a fledgling of a child, her mother would coo over little bruises that her soulmate had given her. And then suddenly all of it stopped. Her mother tried to hide her fears from her, but she could see the pity in her eyes when Vax came to her with such a mark, and she had none.

It wasn’t until after they’d been taken from their mother that Vex’ahlia realized the phantom pains she felt in her fingers where paper cuts and sores from holding a quill for far too long. She had to hide her grin from her tutor and wait for her lesson to end before she rushed off to her brother to tell him the news. _Her soulmate was still alive._

Vex’ahlia would always quietly murmur a soft apology to her other half when she got wounded badly. She didn’t think they would mind the minor scrapes and bruises. But when Trinket got too playful, or when her hunting trip went south… well, Vex’ahlia did feel a bit guilty.  
  
Then one night, she woke up screaming, scaring her brother shitless. But she could not stop screaming, she could not stop crying. She grasped her brother’s shirt and clung to him. _Someone was hurting her soulmate._ Torturing him. Vax had to give her something to knock her out, otherwise she was quite sure that everything in the forest would be coming towards them in the night.

Vex was nearly crippled by what that poor soul was going through. A whole week of mind blowing pain had them stopping at a town. It was Trinket that somehow found the dungeon as they browsed through. There was a nearly broken young Human man laying curled up on the floor, his hair already going white. They got that poor soul out of that cell and learned his name was Percival – _though Percy flowed much better off the tongue._

Vex’ahlia couldn’t quite understand why he kept grinning at Trinket, well… not until she had fallen out of that tree and his screams had matched hers. Her twin had stared at them with both a wide mouth and wide eyes before smiling, helping them both up, and welcoming her poor soulmate to their small little family.

_Then Trinket had given him a kiss._


	5. Ink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate au where writing on one’s skin shows up on the others’.

  
Occasionally Vex would look down at her hands, her wrists and her arms and find all sorts of notes written in neat script. From mathematical formulas, to long words she could barely pronounce. Her mother had never been able to read them, she didn’t know how, but would tell Vex that it just meant her soulmate was very intelligent and she should be proud. Vex herself didn’t know how to write until their Father ripped them apart from their Mother, and threw them into an Elven world she didn’t know how to navigate.

At one family meal her Father had noticed the script and had glared at it. He told her that her soulmate must be _Human_. He had said the word like most used slurs. It had hurt her, and it had hurt her brother, who still clung to the image of their Human Mother. They didn’t understand why Elves seemed to look down upon them so much, or Half-Elves like themselves for that matter.

When Vex began learning to read and write Common, some of the words began to make sense to her. The only half decent teacher she had did not balk from the words on her arms, and in fact read them to her, told her what they meant.

_Her soulmate was a genius. He knew so much._

And then suddenly, one day, the writing stopped. Panic settled in, and her twin held her as she cried. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and time began to pile up. Vex’ahlia was sure her soulmate was dead. Until one day the notes returned. Out of the blue, and she found herself crying yet again, clinging to her brother. _He was alive._

But the notes were far more gruesome from before, that she could tell. She wondered who had hurt her soulmate, who had hurt him so badly. Who had kept him from his notes and change the way he used his brilliant head.

Her twin and her were traveling through a town one day, and Vex looked down to find a location written on her arm. The location of some dungeon, and a beg for help. Vax and her were quickly on their way.  
  
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*  
  
Percival didn’t know why his soulmate never wrote on her skin. The only thing on his own flesh, were notes he had taken on his own. Once though, on his eleventh birthday, there was a horrible doodle of a flower that appeared on his forearm. His sisters had teased him for a week after that, but he could only grin.

When he was twelve, Elvish curled around his wrist in the ugliest handwriting he’d ever laid eyes on. But his lips curled up when his mother noticed during his fitting for a new coat. She had cooed over it and told him an Elvish beauty was in his future – which had him sticking out his tongue at Julius who only had meal orders written on his hand.

When he was fifteen there was a crude drawing of a bear, or at least he thought it was a bear. It had him laughing in the middle of the night as he sat in the library in the dying candlelight. He had began to hypothesize that his soulmate was actually a Half-Elf. The Elvish had been one thing (he had copied it down and looked it up on his own, they seemed to be cheats for a quiz she was taking) but there was no way a full blooded Elf would be drawing silly doodles of a bear on her arm.

When he was seventeen, he stopped writing on his arm. His family was _dead_. It was all his fault. He was too weak to protect and save them, and he would be too weak to protect and save her too. He watched as his soulmate would draw all over body when she realized he had stopped. Then he stopped looking for the drawings, and just tried to focus on the world around him, but he had trouble with even that.

When he was twenty-one he began to write again, but only because he had run out of paper working on his new invention. It was a weapon. A weapon that would destroy the Briarwoods and allow him to return to his home. He noticed the small flowers and arrows that littered the skin on the inside of his elbows but ignored them. Now was not the time to focus on her, _wherever she was_. No, he needed to finish his work.

And then he was twenty-two, alone in a cell. His mission gone awry. He searched his pockets for anything that hadn’t been taken from him, something that could save him from this dungeon. And then a broken quill sat in his hand, with just enough ink to write one last note. Perhaps she could find him, and save him from certain death. Percival could only hope.


End file.
